Posted By Viva Sarah Press On December 2, 2013 @ 12:55 am In Israel in the Spotlight | No Comments

It’s time to tee off and help take Israeli creativity past the crowdsourcing stage. ISRAEL21c scanned the web for the latest cool projects waiting to happen and found a Jamaican reggae legend, a mini-golfer who dreams of putting a hole-in-one on Noah’s Ark, and Mr. Gaga finally willing to spill his dance secrets.

Adventure Mob launched an audacious Kickstarter campaign in October to raise $120,000 for the creation of a new adventure game called Bolt Riley. While the crowdsourcing campaign did not succeed, it snagged some pretty good reviews, and the Israeli team behind this classic 2D point-and-click adventure game is now calling for PayPal donations. Co-designed by Corey and Lori Cole (creators of the Quest for Glory series), the game lets you play as Bolt Riley, a poor boy from Trenchtown, Jamaica, on his pathway to stardom.

Ex South Africans Grant and Daniella Crankshaw want to raise the profile of miniature golf in Israel. Together with another South African expat, a British expat and an Israeli, they’ve launched a crowdsourcing campaign for the pilot Ra’anana biblical themed mini-golf project on Headstart. Their goal? $100,000.

“Our mission is to build and operate quality family entertainment venues across Israel. The business model is based on venues that will include 18-hole, themed mini-golf courses as well as other fun activities such as batting cages and other games,” the Crankshaws write on their campaign site. “Our five years of research indicate that a quality, family entertainment venue, catering to the Israeli public, will be a commercial success.”

Prominent Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin of the Batsheva Dance Company, famed for creating the movement technique known as Gaga, has never liked talking to the press. Award-winning filmmakers Tomer and Barak Heymann, however, somehow persuaded him to let them film him at work. For seven years!

Now, with the Batsheva Dance Company’s 50th anniversary just around the corner, the Heymann brothers have launched a crowdsourcing campaign to help raise funds for packaging the 650 hours of footage into an under-two-hour documentary.

Even Hollywood actress Natalie Portman is excited about the film. “One of the interesting things about Gaga is that Ohad has created his own language of movement. And the language isn’t a set vocabulary that everyone has to learn. It’s like take this idea and then make the movement that your body makes,” says Portman in the Kickstarter trailer.

The movie will only be funded if it reaches its $73,400 goal by January 4, 2014.